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kleenexwomanThis is another assignment for a poetry class. We were instructed to write an ekphrasis, which is a poem written about another work of art, and I chose a picture by Zdzislaw Beksinski. Something about it just screamed "creepy apocalyptic Doctor Who poem."
The last city was a hive was like paper like wax, where things slithered and skittered and stretched in its belly. We wandered and stared at each softened face, each limb shriveled to bone and skin, each hand that twisted into a claw. His face shone and he said isn’t it beautiful isn’t it beautiful, look what your humanity turns into. I felt soft skin sliding over my muscles and looked at my hands and my face was still a face and my feet still held shoes, and refused to call anything else mine.
I took a piece of the sun that my eyes could still see and touched it to the city, and we ran while the flames were behind us, ran through the burning while the future writhed and the past was the only thing that could escape it.
We went to the desert to the plain beautiful brown unbroken plain and I saw it dotted with ash with the bodies that tumbled out burning, and he asked me what did you do to your children. Look what you’ve done. I said I did nothing, it was you that made them beautiful.
He made us catch one as it loped by on all fours and its face was screaming and its face was in flames and I had to look away. It struggled in my arms and would not call me mother and I told it bad children burned, ugly children burned, alien children burned.
I would have taken it to remind me what to avoid, how to steer the streams of time so my bug children beast children bone children would never be and would never build and would never burn. But he bandaged it until I could not see its eyes, and let it go back to its paper wax palace in ash. This is yours where time is, he said, and you must call it beautiful.
The last city was a hive was like paper like wax, where things slithered and skittered and stretched in its belly. We wandered and stared at each softened face, each limb shriveled to bone and skin, each hand that twisted into a claw. His face shone and he said isn’t it beautiful isn’t it beautiful, look what your humanity turns into. I felt soft skin sliding over my muscles and looked at my hands and my face was still a face and my feet still held shoes, and refused to call anything else mine.
I took a piece of the sun that my eyes could still see and touched it to the city, and we ran while the flames were behind us, ran through the burning while the future writhed and the past was the only thing that could escape it.
We went to the desert to the plain beautiful brown unbroken plain and I saw it dotted with ash with the bodies that tumbled out burning, and he asked me what did you do to your children. Look what you’ve done. I said I did nothing, it was you that made them beautiful.
He made us catch one as it loped by on all fours and its face was screaming and its face was in flames and I had to look away. It struggled in my arms and would not call me mother and I told it bad children burned, ugly children burned, alien children burned.
I would have taken it to remind me what to avoid, how to steer the streams of time so my bug children beast children bone children would never be and would never build and would never burn. But he bandaged it until I could not see its eyes, and let it go back to its paper wax palace in ash. This is yours where time is, he said, and you must call it beautiful.